The Point is Moot

Fabulous game for logophiles, vocabulary mavens and others (including homeschoolers and students looking forward to the SATs), Moot, billed as The World's Toughest Language Game, is Sudoku or Trivial Pursuit for those who read the dictionary for fun. The game is for multiples of two players (we usually play as one parent/one child teams). You advance your token around a cribbage-type board by rolling the 12-sided die and answered vocabulary questions at one of four difficulties. The question difficulty depends on what number you roll: 1-3 red; 4-6 green, 7-9 yellow, 10-12 blue.

Some sample questions, picked at random from the stacks and stacks of cards:

Q. Red (easy): If your toes are in a coma, are they comatose? (Get it? Coma-toes?)
A. Yes

Q. Green (hard): Which could be healthy: lasciviousness or prurience?
A. Lasciviousness: To be lustful is to be lascivious, whereas to have an unhealthy obsession with sex is to be prurient.

Q. Yellow (harder): What cooking term means "to soak in seawater" in Latin?
A. Marinate: The word marinate derives from the Latin mare, sea; it denotes "the soaking of meat or fish to enhance flavour." (Spelling variation due to the game being Canadian.)

Q. Blue (nearly impossible): What word was coined to describe the easy-going pace of pilgrims riding to Thomas Becket's tomb?
A. Canter: The word canter was coined by contracting the phrase Canterbury pace, the easy-going pace of the pilgrims riding to the tomb of St. Thomas A' Becket in Canterbury.

Loads of brain-stretching fun (and lots of smacks to the head when you hear the answers)! You can order the game or look at more questions by clicking on the link above.